Today at a press conference at Zuccotti Park, right by Ground Zero, BGZ released a report highlighting the city and federal government’s failure to satisfactorily care for thousands of residents of lower Manhattan in the wake of 9/11. BGZ conducted a community health survey that showed that after the towers fell, many residents and workers’ health has severely diminished and that the government’s response has been adequate at best. BGZ developed recommendations for policymakers as important 9/11 health legislation is being debated in both the U.S. House and Senate. Read a copy of the report here:

The Beyond Ground Zero Network (BGZ) is a group of community-based organizations that came together shortly after September 11, 2001 to address the severe health and economic impact of the World Trade Center’s collapse on Lower Manhattan’s low-income communities, especially among immigrants in Chinatown and the Lower East Side. BGZ saw that despite the enormous attention given to the post-9/11 recovery effort, the impact on the poorest residents and workers of Chinatown and the Lower East Side remains largely ignored.

By conducting wide-scale surveys of low-income residents and workers in these neighborhoods from 2002 to the present, BGZ discovered that thousands of people are still coping with severe 9/11-related illnesses without access to health care or assistance of any kind. Using a grassroots community-based outreach and educational model to connect underserved communities, BGZ has developed and coordinated strategies to ensure critical and immediate assistance for all low-income individuals affected by 9-11.